It's Tuesday at 2:00pm! (PST Time: I live and work from Southern California)
Greetings to you!
Each week I send out a short leadership blog that's called "Tuesday at 2:00pm". The purpose of this is simply to provide a brief thought on leadership that you can read and think about in just a few minutes. I send it out every week at 2:00pm (PST) and encourage you to make an appointment with yourself to pause and think about the thing I'm writing about.
Russ...
LEADERSHIP QUOTE:
"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." Henry David Thoreau
What does this stir up? Either write me HERE or comment at the end of the blog post HERE.
A LITTLE BIT DEEPER:
This Month we're going to explore some quotes on the theme of VISION. Click Here to see past posts.
This simple quote from Thoreau is really about PERSPECTIVE.
2 weeks ago, my wife and I were on a small game drive outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. We traveled to spend time with good friends and ministry partners, Jabulani Africa, then we took a couple of days at a small lodge on our way back to the airport.
We did a small game drive where we enjoyed seeing elephants, giraffes, rhino's, warthogs, and many other animals. It's always amazing to see these animals in person.
As we were leaving, our guide spotted a leopard. We stopped. We spent about 30 minutes looking in the brush from our vehicle. The guide saw the tail. I just saw the brush.
We drove down the road, then circled back again.
We looked again, and just waited.
Then we saw it move. It was incredible. In a way, it just appeared in the brush, and then we saw it move away.
The guide shared that this was only his 2nd leopard siting on that farm in 7 years. We were all pretty excited to see it.
Of course, the only picture I got was this one:
Believe me.... the leopard is there! You just can't see him!
When I read the quote from Thoreau, I thought about our leopard siting.
We were looking in the right place, but we didn't see it for a long time. Fortunately, the leopard made a majestic appearance before taking off.
Have you had a similar experience of looking at something and not being able to see what others see or what you're supposed to be seeing?
DEEPER STILL:
We're talking about VISION and being able to see clearly is so important to each of us in our roles and leadership.
Being able to see has a lot to do with where you're going, but it is also important in determining where you are.
I always had people on my teams who saw things differently than me, and I found great value in this:
Some looked at things from a 30,000 or 40,000 foot perspective
Some saw things under the surface, thanks that were invisible
Some saw what was around the corner, what was coming
Some saw how our decisions impacted others lives
Some paid attention to how I was doing as a leader
These different perspectives were all important, and they helped me see more clearly as a leader in my role.
You've heard me say this before:
I believe that sometimes we don't see important things because:
We're running at an unsustainable pace.
We're too busy to stop and really see what's happening
We're too busy looking forward that we miss where we're at today
We don't have others who can help us see things we might miss
We don't really want to see things. We're afraid of what we'll find
Pay attention to not only what you're looking at, but what you're seeing!
Things I'm Reading, Listening To and Watching This Week:
Things I'm Reading, Listening To and Enjoying This Week:
There's a great song: I can see clearly now the rain is gone, by Jimmy Cliff. Talks about obstacles, clouds and a bright, sunshiny day!
I'm not sure how I missed this, but found this series on Amazon Prime from 2012 based on one of my favorite Grisham books, The Firm. Enjoyed this on a long cross-atlantic flight!
Just picked up this book from Sharon McMahon, The Small and the Mighty. Looking forward to digging into it in the coming weeks.
While I haven't been traveling much, I was able to finally test out my travel pillow purchased a couple of years ago. It worked great! Cabeau Evolution Travel Neck Pillow
OK William, I'm into the book.... The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest. Some interesting perspective on self-sabotage!